‘I’ll phone,’ Zoey said. But he knew from the too-quick smile she threw him that she wouldn’t. ‘Give me a call next time you’re in London for more than a night, yeah?’
‘I will. We can...get dinner or something.’
‘Sounds good.’ Her smile grew strained. ‘Bye, Ash.’
‘Bye.’
And then she was gone. And Ash felt suddenly very, very alone again.
* * *
Pregnant.
The word echoed around Zoey’s head the whole way to the airport.
She heard it in the waves around the speedboat that took her from the hotel island to the mainland, and in the rumble of tyres on the road of the minibus that took her to the terminal. It was in the roar of the planes taking off and landing.
‘Pregnant?’ the girl behind the counter at the drinks stall in the airport said. Zoey blinked until the girl repeated what she’d actually said. ‘Coffee?’
Wasn’t caffeine bad for the baby?
No. Because there was no baby. Even she wasn’t that unlucky, right?
‘Black,’ she said. ‘And strong, please.’
Sitting cradling her cup of coffee, she tried to think through all the events of the last thirty-six hours without her head exploding.
It wasn’t easy.
But what it came down to was just what she’d told Ash. It was time to stop waiting around for someone to save her, love her, marry her, give her the family life she craved. Instead, she needed to fight for and carve out a life she could love for herself.
However hard that was.
That was why she hadn’t let Ash help her get home—or even see her off the island. She knew that if he’d come with her to the airport it would have been far too easy to start relying on him again. Even if she managed to avoid slipping into the casual relationship with him that she’d foreseen when she’d started planning her return trip, just needing someone else to save her rankled now.
She needed to go it alone. It was past time.
Which didn’t mean she wasn’t already missing him like crazy.
Zoey took another sip of coffee to stifle a groan. What had she been thinking? She’d screwed up in the past before, but never quite like this. Never ‘run out on a wedding thousands of miles from home, got shipwrecked and had unprotected sex with my best friend’ screwed up. This was a whole new level of Zoey catastrophe.
No wonder her parents drank so much.
She’d seen them again, on her way out of the hotel, and told them she was leaving. They seemed to agree that it was for the best. She expected they’d stay out there for the full week they’d planned—at David’s expense, actually.
Zoey winced. She was quite glad she was missing that too. And if she was lucky, she’d have found a room in a shared flat or something and moved in before they even realised she’d been staying at home.
She wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of going back to flat shares and tiny cramped accommodation after David’s luxury apartment, but she didn’t have much in the way of choices. She loved her job, but her salary didn’t stretch far in London. And part of going it alone meant she really couldn’t ask her parents for help, beyond a bed for a few nights while they were away.
She’d make it work. She always had before.
Stretching out her legs, Zoey stared across the airport terminal at all the holiday-makers coming and going. Happy families, loved-up couples, honeymooners, retirees, excited kids...all living the lives she wanted for herself. All with someone or a whole family of someones to love and support them.
And here she was, alone with her coffee and a sense of impending doom.
‘This has to be rock-bottom,’ she whispered to herself.
Then she straightened her back. Because if this was as low as she could get, that meant the only way forward was up.
Yanking her phone from her pocket, she opened up the notes app and started to type.
New Plan for Fewer Disasters
No disasters seemed a little ambitious, but fewer was surely doable.
1) Take responsibility for my own life and future.
2) Decide what I want from life that I can give myself, without needing someone else.
3) Quit dating for a while. Say, six months, minimum.
4) Say no next time someone proposes to me. Just for a change.